If you want to raise **business** $$ for an AGI project 5 years from now, the best thing you could do IMO would be to spend the next 5 years becoming successful **in business**
Then you will be able to go to investors with a load of biz credibility. You'll also have some of your own $$ to invest. And, you'll easily be able to line up PhD advisors to give you academic cred. The downside is, you'll make no AGI progress during those 5 years, implementationwise or conceptually, because becoming successful in business requires both luck and a lot of work (well, OK, unless the amount of luck is incredible...) There are many good reasons to get a PhD, but to boost your odds in raising startup $$ is really not one of them... If academic credibility were the key to getting biz funding for AGI, I suppose Novamente LLC would have been funded by now, rather than being an eternally-marginal software consulting company doing AGI R&D on the side. We certainly have enough publications and academic cred, and a bunch of PhDs on staff in addition to me. ben g On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 4:00 PM, YKY (Yan King Yin) < [email protected]> wrote: > > On the contrary, getting a PhD is an astoundingly poor strategy for > raising > > $$ for a startup. If you have a talent for biz sufficient to raise $$ > for a > > startup, you can always get some prof to join your team to lend you > academic > > credibility. > > > > It is also useful in terms of lending you more credibility when you talk > > about your own wacky research ideas. This may be part of YKY's > motivation, > > and it's a genuinely meaningful one. But having credibility when talking > > about research ideas is not particularly well correlated with being able > to > > raise business funding. > > Getting business funding may be an inherently hard thing to do. So, > other things being equal, spending some time + money on a PhD degree > may still be better than all other options. That's my current > reasoning... > > > ------------------------------------------- > agi > Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now > RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ > Modify Your Subscription: > https://www.listbox.com/member/?&; > Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com > -- Ben Goertzel, PhD CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC Director of Research, SIAI [email protected] "I intend to live forever, or die trying." -- Groucho Marx ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
